


beautiful destruction

by pastelcandies



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Guardian Angel AU, Human AU, Hurricanes, M/M, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, i need sleep lmao, mentioned nightmares intrusive thoughts and insomnia but not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21626800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelcandies/pseuds/pastelcandies
Summary: Dreams save Roman from his own personal hell
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Prinxiety
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	beautiful destruction

**Author's Note:**

> SO this is not my best work but I honestly worked hard on it.  
> Read the tags for warnings, and please let me know if I missed anything. 🖤

Roman was standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.  
Even as thunder crashed, visible destruction was wreaked, and heavy raindrops hit his skin, the setting felt peaceful. Torrents of rain fell wildly from the dark grey clouds, the white noise from the drops hitting the ground drowning out all his thoughts. As roughly as the raindrops were falling onto his skin, his scars didn’t sting. In the midst of the rolling thunder, soaked by the rain, as trees were ripped from the ground, he felt a rare sense of peace and serenity.  
For hours, he watched and listened as the storm slowly started to calm down, the downpour of rain reduced to a gentle drizzle, the ruthless wind calming to an occasional breeze, the periods in between thunderclaps becoming longer and longer until there was none. Soon he stood in silence, still thoroughly drenched, shivering as the occasional gust of wind hit him, staring at the star-strewn sky above him. It was perfect, as if it had been created solely for him. Never before had he seen so many stars.  
All of it felt too ethereal and surreal. Too perfect and dreamlike to be anything but some tearstained dream.  
Precisely, he woke up a few minutes later, a heavy weight of dread and exhaustion settling at the realization; he was no longer in his serene unreality where pain and anxiety had no place.  
—————————————  
Later that night, Roman went to bed with an overload of anxiety and a desire to never wake up. At least sleep was an escape from life, where it was enough to lie down, practically comatose, and not do anything - during the nights he wasn’t plagued with his fears, questions, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and/or nightmares.  
Blessedly, as he thought of his storm-ridden escape of the prior night, he fell asleep quite easily, slipping into a now familiar place he quite welcomed; the midst of a hurricane. 

Fiercer and more destructive than the prior night, a new storm brought devastation to everything in its path. It was one thing to hear about the ruination caused by a hurricane, or see the aftermath, but it was incomparable to genuinely standing in the center of a storm. Watching as tendrils of thunder strike across the sky and lightning blinds anyone watching as it flashes then disappears in the span of a second, as raindrops raging from the dark dull sky hit the ground, as the unwavering wind uprooted trees and redirected the rain’s path brought a strange sense of serenity. Soaked in rain, in the midst of violent destruction, he still stood unhurt and uninjured. This time, not only did he feel finally at peace; for the first time in years, he felt alive. He felt powerful, as if he could cease the storm and redirect the wind if he wanted.  
Even as he thought this, the rain halted, the wind stopped blowing, and the earth stood entirely still, the eerie hush of a finished storm coming to rest on the setting. As the surrounding grew brighter when moonlight and starlight were let in through the gaps in the clouds, Roman learned he wasn’t alone.  
Another man was standing at the other side of the space - and staring directly at Roman. Someone with messy hair and glittering eyes and bat-like wings, like some sort of night angel. Startled, he started mentally running through his next options - but before he could do anything, he woke up yet again, the bitterness and dread setting in even heavier than it had before. 

Throughout his day, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking of the angel in his dream. Or was it even a dream? Roman wondered if he should still call it that, it had done too much to him to have meant nothing.  
—————————————-  
When he fell asleep that night, his arm was covered in bandages and his head was aching out of his mind. All of it somehow felt so dull and monotonous, as if he no longer had the energy to care about any of it, not even a migraine pounding at his head.

Once again, he was standing in the clearing of a forest, as the sky trembled threateningly. Though it had been only days prior the only place he still felt alive, now even here he felt too exhausted to enjoy it, all serenity disappeared from what had once been his only source of peace.  
Turning, he let out a rather undignified yelp when he discovered the person standing right next to him, scowling darkly. For a few moments, he was too alarmed to realize it was the angel, as he had taken to calling him, the person he had been so distracted by all week, that multiple people had actually asked after him or sent him concerned looks. Right now, however, he was scowling at Roman, yet with a touch of sadness in his eyes.  
Roman flinched when the stranger gently touched his arm and lifted his sleeve to reveal the bloodstained bandages, the result of his own razor blades. However, he simply gazed at him sadly and traced the newly-formed cuts with his finger, his touch healing the wounds, now faded into harmless scars. Roman looked away, unable to bring himself to meet the healer’s eyes until he placed his fingers on Roman’s face and forced his face towards himself so that Roman would have no choice than to look him in the eyes. 

“Don’t do this shit to yourself. I won’t be able to heal it every time.” He scowled.

Taken aback, Roman stared at him for a few seconds. He had been expecting some “sympathy” that sounded insincere, but somehow, the rough words growled at him from the stranger felt… refreshing. Slightly dazed, he decided that he had no choice but to nod and agree.  
“Good. Thank -Thank you.” His voice sounded gentler and less confident now, a barely visible blush on his face as if he was surprised Roman had actually listened to him.  
For the first time in months, Roman felt a genuine smile on his mouth.  
—————————————-  
“I swear, y’all never hear what I’m saying half the time!” Patton laughed, “Even Logan doesn’t have his head this far in the clouds when he finds something new to learn about!”  
Roman had laughed at his friend’s good-natured joke, but he knew that Patton was right; for weeks, Roman had been very distracted. All he could think about was the angel who had healed the gashes in his skin he was so careful to keep hidden, who had a scowl that didn’t match the gentleness and sadness in his black eyes, the stranger that had held his hand in the clearing while they gazed at the stars, the angel with stars sprinkled over his wings so that they seemed part of the sky itself, the person whom the thought of was the only thing which could make Roman put his blades away.  
Somehow, despite the fact that Patton was his closest friend, he couldn’t bring himself to tell him about the dreams, nor of the person in them. While they had just been dreams, illusions crafted by his own mind as he slept, all of it irrationally seemed too personal to discuss, as if they belonged to him for his mind only. The dreams didn’t stop, but the angel didn’t return. While Roman still loved these dreams, his only escape, now that he knew there was something missing he couldn’t stop himself from missing him, even though he had said only two things to Roman, and Roman hadn’t even properly replied. Nevertheless, he had healed Roman’s cuts and watched the stars with him for the remainder of the dream. Despite knowing it was stupid and illogical, all Roman wanted was to dream him again.  
———————————  
When, just a few nights later, the angel flew down next to Roman, he had to stop himself from running to him. His joy, however, was rather crushed as he noticed the angel’s shoulders were hunched, his wings tightly drawn in, fidgeting with his fingers, clear signs of anxiety Roman carried in himself too frequently to not notice it in someone else.

“Did you make this?” Roman was surprised by his own voice cracking the tense silence, the words escaping just as he thought them.

“…Yes.” He whispered in reply, his voice shakier than the last time Roman heard him speak.

“I…Why?” He asked, rather childishly, he thought.

There was a long tense pause before the whispered answer came. “You needed it, and I was supposed to protect you. If I was to intervene, it probably shouldn’t have been so direct but… I could tell you needed it. I had to watch your nightmares night after night, the few times you were able to sleep anyway. I wasn’t supposed to let you suffer. And when you started self-harming, I knew I was fucking up and you needed help.”

Roman let these words sink in. “So you did make these dreams specifically for me?” He inquired, strangely touched.

“Well, yeah, you needed them. It’s my job to help you.”

He contemplated this for a few seconds before finding a new question. “How come I haven’t seen you before?”

Yet another prolonged silence, before he answered in the same soft tone, “You aren’t supposed to, but I wasn’t going to do nothing while you were hurting yourself.”

“But I stopped, so why are you back?” He cringed after he said the words, they sounded so blank and harsh. 

After the longest stretch of tension filled silence, Roman heard, but just barely, “Because I wanted to come back. I…” He didn’t finish the sentence, clearly having too much difficulty choking whatever words he intended out. Roman could relate to the feeling. On instinct, in place of a verbal reply, he reached for the other’s hand and laced their fingers together. The stranger - was he really still a stranger? - didn’t try to take his hand away, which Roman accepted, his heart glowing.

They stared at the star-strewn sky, clearer than ever.  
——————————  
There is no similar emotion to feeling love after your heart has gone cold. Where there was once only aches and pain, then nothing, to feel warmth and light and contentment.  
The angel’s name was Virgil, and Roman was wholeheartedly in love with him, against all logic and efforts. People were starting to worry about him.

“I must say, Roman, you’re always rather scatter-brained, but lately you never have any idea what I am saying to you. Are you quite sure you are all right?” Logan would inquire helplessly, very concerned about his friend but unsure how to assist.

“Kiddo, I’m glad to see you doing better, but you’re always in a world by yourself! What’s been going on with you lately? It’s like I’m not even talking to you sometimes!” A distraught Patton would ask, distressed by the mere suggestion that his friend wasn’t okay.

Roman was constantly reassuring them, yes, he was doing just fine. Months later, it still felt far too personal to share the mysterious visions of his head that were too real to be only dreams. He could hardly explain that he was helplessly and regrettably in love with a boy who wasn’t human, a boy made from thunder and lightning and stardust who only visited him in his dreams. He couldn’t explain that’s who occupied his thoughts in every moment. 

Now, Virgil came every night, and they would watch the storms together. During one particular night, they sat next to each other, leaning on each other a bit, stargazing in silence. They were unusually quiet that night.

“You need to start thinking about your friends more. They’re worrying about you.” Virgil whispered, shattering the silence.

Guilt and regret consumed every one of his thoughts. Of course, he had been treating them horribly lately. “I’m sorry. I will.” He sighed.

“Don’t apologize. I just know you’d never forgive yourself if you realized too late.” 

Roman smiled fondly as a familiar thought entered his brain. “I wish you could meet them. They would love you.” 

A shuddering sigh. “I wish I could too.” Virgil replied, his voice strangely choked up. “I just - I just hate it that I have to sneak away to see you, and then only in your dreams. I hate that I was so numb that I couldn’t care about anything until I had you, and I’m not supposed to care about you. I’m not allowed to. And we…” His voice dropped to below a whisper. “We won’t be able to do this forever. And I just can’t fucking stand that you might wake up one day after I haven’t seen you for years, and you’ll remember about the storms you used to dream, and you’ll just - you’ll just smile at how stupid you were that you used to care about an illusion created by your own head.” Tears started running down his face.

Roman gently wiped the tears away with his thumb. He smiled, just a bit, reminded of how much he loved Virgil. “But are you an illusion created by my own head?”

“Well, no, but-“

“You’re all I can think about, Virgil. You’re what keeps me alive! You’re the only motivation I have to continue! If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve died months ago, but you came and healed my cuts and gave me a reason to stop. I won’t forget that. I can’t forget that.”  
—————————  
Roman wasn’t much one for wishes, but now every night found him praying, wishing, pleading desperately to anyone or anything that might be out there that the sun wouldn’t rise this time.

But the sun always rose.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr, @anxietea-and-insanitea, or on discord, Winter#0972 🖤


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